Ebola centers in West Africa fill faster than they can be opened

DAKAR, Senegal >> Beds in Ebola treatment centers are filling up faster than they can be provided, evidence that an outbreak in West Africa is far more severe than the numbers show, an official with the World Health Organization said Friday.

The outbreak sweeping Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria is already the largest and deadliest ever. But the World Health Organization said Thursday that official counts of the dead and infected may still “vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak.”

The flood of patients into every newly opened treatment center is evidence that the numbers aren’t keeping up, Gregory Hartl, a spokesman for the U.N. health agency, said from Geneva.

Hartl said that an 80-bed treatment center opened in Liberia’s capital in recent days filled up immediately. The next day, dozens more people showed up to be treated.

Meanwhile, he said that experts who are going house-to-house in Kenema, Sierra Leone, in search of infected people are discovering more cases.

According to WHO figures, the outbreak has killed more than 1,060 people and sickened nearly 2,000. The agency has said it is prepared for the outbreak to last for several more months.

Ebola, which causes a high fever, bleeding and vomiting, has no cure and no licensed treatment. The disease is usually found in eastern or central Africa, typically in rural, isolated communities, where outbreaks tend to be “self-limiting,” Hartl said.

By contrast, the current outbreak spread quickly to cities and the capitals of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, making it difficult to stop its spread.